
14 Thursday Sep 2017
Posted in American Jewish Life, Divrei Torah, Ethics, Health and Well-Being, Holidays, Stories

11 Monday Sep 2017

The central theme of the High Holidays is teshuvah, a restorative process that brings us back to ourselves, to our families and friends, to our community, to humanity, to the natural world, to Torah, and to God. Teshuvah demonstrates the power of hope, that who we are today need not be who we become tomorrow.
Teshuvah is a step-by-step process of turning and re-engaging with our inclinations, the yetzer hara-the evil urge that’s propelled by desire, lust, and self-centered needs and our yetzer tov-the good inclination that is inspired by humility, gratitude, generosity, and kindness.
The beginning in the teshuvah process is, however, despair, hopelessness, and sadness, the feeling that we’re stuck and can’t change the nature, character, and direction our lives have taken us.
Judaism rejects pessimism, cynicism, and everything that impedes personal transformation and a hopeful future.
In the story of Jonah, to be read as final scriptural portion on the afternoon of Yom Kippur, we read the tale of the prophet’s descent into despair and what’s required for him to change direction and restore a hopeful self.
Jonah is an unrealized prophet who runs away from himself, from civilization, and from God. Every verb used in his journey is the language of descent (yod-resh-daled). He flees down to the sea. He boards a ship and goes down into its dark interior. He lies down and falls into a deep sleep. He is thrown overboard down into the waters. A great fish swallows him and he finds himself down in its belly where he remains in utter darkness for three days and nights until his despair forces him, at last, to choose to live and not to die. Then he cries out to God to save him.
God responds and the great fish vomits Jonah out onto dry land. Jonah agrees this time to do God’s bidding and preach to the Ninevites to repent from their evil ways. The town’s people put on sack cloth and ashes and promise to change.
Jonah, however, still believes that change is impossible and the Ninevites are destined to failure. God chastises Jonah for his pessimism and lack of faith, for his self-centered concern for himself and not the well-being of others.
Teshuvah is difficult and challenging. It’s a dramatic break from the past, our refusal to remain stuck. It’s for the strong of mind, heart and soul, for those willing to work hard and transcend their suffering and fear of failure, to get up every time, to own without defense and excuse what we do and what we’ve become, to acknowledge all of it, to apologize to ourselves and to others without conditions that we are responsible and at fault, and to recommit to our struggle step-by-step, patiently, one day at a time, one hour at a time, one moment at a time to turn our lives around.
When successful, teshuvah is restorative and utopian, for it enables us to return to our best selves, to the place of soul, to the garden of oneness.
Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik wrote that in teshuvah we’re able even to transcend time: “The future has overcome the past.”
Originally published – September 13, 2015
03 Sunday Sep 2017

Forgiveness (i.e. forgiving others and forgiving ourselves) may be the most difficult challenge we ever have to face. However, we often make it more difficult than it needs to be because we misunderstand what forgiveness is and is meant to do.
Forgiving others doesn’t mean excusing their bad behavior or forgetting that they wronged us. Even if people who hurt us don’t apologize to us and even if they continue to justify what they did that is contrary to what we believe actually happened, we ought to forgive them not for their sake but for ours. Forgiveness means “letting go” of resentments because these negative and toxic feelings are damaging to us.
Having noted this, the ideal goal of forgiveness is to reconcile and reestablish some kind of relationship with the offending “other.” Let me be quick to say, however, that reconciliation isn’t always possible if, for example, the person who harmed us or we harmed is deceased, nor is it always desirable if the “other” is so incorrigible, narcissistic, and damaged that we have no desire for reconciliation.
Here, however, is one positive example of what forgiveness can do.
A woman in her 70s hadn’t spoken with her sister in forty years. Out of the blue one day her sister called to tell her that she was dying and wanted to see her. They met, her sister apologized for the wrong that caused the breach so long before, and asked for forgiveness. They wept together and reconciled. After her sister died the woman felt a heavy burden lifted from her heart, and the love she once felt for her sister returned.
There is no time like the present (in this season of Elul before Rosh Hashanah in particular) to summon the courage, take the risk, and seek forgiveness from those we’ve wronged even if the event occurred many years ago. Hopefully, those who wronged us will do the same. There is no expiration date nor is there a statute of limitations on forgiveness.
Michael McCullough extends the principles of forgiveness to groups, communities, and nations:
“The forgiveness instinct … can change the world. Groups can be helped to forgive other groups, communities can be helped to forgive other communities, …and nations can even be helped to forgive other nations. Leaders… can offer apologies on behalf of their people to groups with whom they’ve been in conflict. They can also offer … remorse and empathy for the suffering of another group, and they can provide compensation to groups of people whom they’ve harmed – just as individuals can. When they engage in such gestures, it is often to great effect.” (Beyond Revenge – The Evolution of the Forgiveness Instinct, [Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, 2008] p. 181-2)
Think of the power of Pope John Paul II’s apology to the Jewish people for Christendom’s participation in the Holocaust, the Japanese apology for war atrocities it committed against China and Korea, the United States’ apology to Japanese Americans interred in concentration camps during World War II, and the Irish Republican Army’s apology for the deaths of noncombatants during the war in northern Ireland.
Imagine Prime Minister Netanyahu on behalf of Israel and President Abbas on behalf of the Palestinians taking a similar step and apologizing to the other for the pain and suffering each people caused non-combatants on the other side. If this were to happen, if either took the initiative, I believe that a peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is possible.
Longfellow wrote: “If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each person’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.”
Note: Selichot (the Holiday in which Judaism teaches that the Gates of Heaven begin to open to receive the petitionary prayers of the community) this year falls on Saturday night, September 16. Those who live in Los Angeles and are unaffiliated are welcome to join us at Temple Israel of Hollywood. We’ll convene for learning with the Rabbis at 8:30 pm considering all aspects of forgiveness, followed by a presentation by Theater Dybbuk on the theme of forgiveness, and then we’ll join together in the mystical service of Selichot in which we will change the Torah mantles on all our sifrei Torah to white. Come dressed in white.
L’shanah tovah.
30 Wednesday Aug 2017

During the thirty days before Rosh Hashanah we Jews begin the process of returning (Teshuvah) to the people from whom we’ve become alienated, to the Jewish community, to Torah, to one’s own soul, to a balanced relationship with nature, and to God. Part of that journey requires the act forgiveness in all its dimensions. Forgiving those who have hurt us is not easy.
I’ve come to the conclusion that our forgiving others and forgiving ourselves for past wrongs means letting go of hurt, anger, resentment, jealousy, envy, and hate, and thereby becoming free. If we are successful, the ensuing relationship we develop with the “other” will necessarily be different than it was. In many cases, the change that takes place in us requires letting go not only of the toxic relationship that caused us so much pain and hardship but any future relationship with the “other.”
On Saturday night, September 16, the Jewish world enters into a midnight service called “Selichot” (“forgiveness”) when tradition teaches that the gates of heaven begin to open to receive our prayers and supplications. Selichot is the opening service of the High Holiday season and it occurs on Saturday night just before Rosh Hashanah. It is a powerful service if we take the need for forgiveness seriously.
I have compiled a list of quotations from world literature that offer wisdom and insight into the purpose and benefits of forgiveness. I present it to you as a gift.
“Forgiveness sets you free!” – Mother Teresa
“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.” – Mohandas “Mahatma” Gandhi
“I can forgive, but I cannot forget” is only another way of saying, ‘I will not forgive.’ Forgiveness ought to be like a canceled note — torn in two, and burned up, so that it never can be shown against one.” – Henry Ward Beecher
“A wise person will make haste to forgive, because s/he knows the true value of time, and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain.” – Samuel Johnson
“Those who cannot forgive others break the bridge over which they themselves must pass.” – Confucius
“To forgive someone does not mean you excuse their behavior or that they were bad. To forgive means getting rid of your resentment, so that it does not complicate your own life.” – Rabbi Abraham J Twerski
“The primary aspect of forgiveness is not as an act of kindness toward the offender, but as a gift to oneself, to free one of the burdens of harboring resentment, which can have negative effects, both physically and emotionally.” – Rabbi Abraham J Twerski
“Forgiveness isn’t about pardoning the one who has hurt us. We simply decide to move on.” – Rabbi Edwin Goldberg
“If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each person’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.” – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
“The day the child realizes that all adults are imperfect, s/he becomes an adolescent; the day s/he forgives them, s/he becomes an adult; the day s/he forgives her/himself, s/he becomes wise.” – Alden Nowlan
“Ribono shel olam! I hereby forgive everyone who has angered or provoked me or sinned against me, whether against me physically, financially, or against my dignity, or against anything belonging to me, whether it was done under duress, or intentionally, or inadvertently or willfully, whether it was verbal, or by deed, or by thought, whether it was in this existence or in a previous existence, everyone, and may no person ever be punished because of me.” – Jewish bedtime prayer
L’shanah tovah!
19 Wednesday Apr 2017
Posted in American Jewish Life, Holidays, Jewish History, Jewish Identity
On April 19, 1943, under the command of SS General Juergen Stroop, Nazi tanks entered what remained of the Warsaw Ghetto to search out, arrest, and send the final 750 Jewish survivors to the death camp at Treblinka. However, the might of the Nazi death machine came up against one of the greatest acts of resistance by the Jewish people during World War II.
It took one month for the Nazis to put down the uprising and completely destroy the Warsaw Ghetto officially ending the uprising on May 16, 1943, though we know that a few Jews escaped to tell the full story through the sewers of the city.
In the history of the Warsaw Ghetto recorded in real time by Emmanuel Ringelblum, we read:
“Whomever you talk to, you hear the same cry: The resettlement never should have been permitted. We should have run into the street, set fire to everything in sight, have torn down the walls, and escaped to the Other Side. The Germans would have taken their revenge. It would have cost tens of thousands of lives, but not 300,000. Now we are ashamed of ourselves, disgraced in our own eyes, and in the eyes of the world, where our docility has earned us nothing. This must not be repeated now. We must put up a resistance, defend ourselves against the enemy, man and child.” (“Notes from the Warsaw Ghetto: The Journal of Emmanuel Ringelblum,” ed. and translated by Joob Solan. NY: Schocken Books, 1958, p. 326.)
Henrich Himmler had ordered the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto on April 19, 1943, one day in advance of Hitler’s birthday. When the Nazis entered the ghetto with their tanks, however, the 750 Jewish resisters attacked and burned their first tank. The Nazi soldiers were stunned and retreated.
I encourage you to read the complete story of the ghetto uprising in David Kopel’s article published on October 10, 2015 in the Washington Post, “The Warsaw ghetto uprising: Armed Jews vs. Nazis” (Opinion).
Temple Israel of Hollywood will commemorate Yom Hashoah this coming Sunday, April 23 from 4:30 PM to 5:45 PM. We welcome two survivors and a college student who grew up in our congregation who together participated in the Los Angeles Bureau of Education’s “March of the Living”.
As part of our commemoration, survivors, children of survivors, and grandchildren of survivors will kindle 6 flames in memory of those who perished.
The community is invited.
16 Sunday Apr 2017
On March 26, I posted a blog announcing the publication of a new Haggadah “A Jubilee Haggadah Marking the 50th Year Since the 1967 War” that brought together thirty Israeli and American Jewish peace activists (including me) who offered commentaries on aspects of the traditional Haggadah. See https://rabbijohnrosove.wordpress.com/2017/03/26/a-jubilee-haggadah-marking-the-50th-year-since-the-1967-war/
I opened the blog announcing that
“A new Haggadah has just been published by SISO (“Save Israel – Stop the Occupation”). It is called the Jubilee Haggadah because it marks the 50th year since the 1967 War, a turning point in the history of the modern State of Israel that the writers and editors conjoin with the biblical Jubilee commandment – “You shall proclaim liberty throughout the land for all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you…” (Leviticus 25:10) – and with the celebration of Passover, the festival of liberty.
The Haggadah is part of a new initiative begun by prominent Israeli individuals and organizations in partnership with Jewish leaders around the world who believe that the prolonged Israeli military occupation poses a very real threat to Israel’s safety and well-being, and undermines the moral and democratic fabric of Israel and its standing in the community of nations. See SISO’s website – https://www.siso.org.il.”
I received a thoughtful and friendly reply in Hebrew from Dr. Zioni Ben Yair (I do not know him) that said (translation is mine):
“I certainly sympathize with the need to break free from the corruption of the occupation [of the West Bank] because it contradicts the Torah and Haggadah and it’s making us an undemocratic apartheid state. Nevertheless, I believe we must continue to use the Haggadah as it is without changing even a single letter. The Haggadah has been read during all 82 years of my life, in different situations, in different countries and under different and unique circumstances, and in many cases, there are no proper reasons for change and new formulations….We need to be able to continue to read the Haggadah literally as we are used to doing from time immemorial.” (See Dr. Ben Yair’s original Hebrew letter: https://rabbijohnrosove.wordpress.com/2017/03/26/a-jubilee-haggadah-marking-the-50th-year-since-the-1967-war/#comments
This past week in The Forward, J.J. Goldberg wrote a piece he called “Is Passover Broken Beyond Repair?” in which he discusses a plethora of new Haggadot written over the decades that is a fitting response to Dr. Ben Yair’s comments – see http://forward.com/opinion/israel/368555/is-passover-broken-beyond-repair/?attribution=author-article-listing-2-headline.
Once you read JJ’s article, I suggest asking who is right – The traditionalists who wish not to change a word of the traditional Haggadah, or the innovators of new Haggadot who seek to apply the historic Jewish experience of victimization and liberation to others?
In my response to Dr. Ben Yair, I noted that the traditional Haggadah is a compilation of Midrashim, commentaries, stories, rituals, and symbols that entered the Haggadah over the centuries for specific reasons. A prime example is the custom of opening the door for Elijah, a relatively “recent” addition to the Seder (500-600 years ago) that was introduced during times of anti-Semitic persecution and violence provoked by the blood libel accusation.
Jews opened their doors to show Christians who were sensitive to the New Testament’s deicide accusation against the Jews who happened to be passing by that nothing horrific and sacrilegious was taking place in Jewish homes.
I suggested to Dr. Ben Yair, whose letter shows his concern about the corrupting effect of the occupation on West Bank Palestinians, on the soul of the Jewish people and State of Israel that for the Seder to remain meaningful today, in our generation, its themes of liberation, justice, and compassion must be applied not only to our own Jewish conditions but to the injustices suffered by peoples everywhere.
What do you think?
14 Friday Apr 2017
Posted in Art, Divrei Torah, Holidays, Life Cycle, Musings about God/Faith/Religious life, Poetry
“The world is not as worthy as the day on which the Song of Songs was given to Israel, for all the writings are holy, but the Song of Songs is the Holy of Holies.”
So said Rabbi Akiva (2nd century Palestine), who believed that The Song of Songs, a love poem in the Hebrew Bible, traditionally attributed to King Solomon as a young man, is an allegory between two lovers, God and Israel.
The allegorical interpretation of The Song of Songs is why The Song of Songs is read each year on the Shabbat during Pesach, this Shabbat, for it’s then that we celebrate our people’s redemption and liberation from bondage on the one hand and the Kabbalistic idea of the hoped-for-redemption of God within God’s Divine Self on the other.
All that being said, this extraordinarily enriched poetry seems to be a purely secular poem (God’s Name is never mentioned) celebrating young, sensuous and erotic love and the passionate draw of two lovers yearning for relief from their existential loneliness:
“For love is strong as death, / Harsh as the grave. / Its tongues are flames, a fierce / And holy blaze” (Song of Songs 8:6 – Translation by Marcia Falk)
Rabbi Avraham Isaac Kook wrote of a higher metaphysical love represented by the Song of Songs in this way (Translation by Ben Zion Bokser):
“Expanses divine my soul craves. / Confine me not in cages, / of substance or of spirit. / I am love-sick / I thirst, / I thirst for God, / as a deer for water brooks.
Alas, who can describe my pain? / Who will be a violin / to express the songs of my grief?
I am bound to the world, / all creatures, / all people are my friends.
Many parts of my soul / are intertwined with them, / But how can I share with them my light.”
Tonight – Friday, April 14 at 6:30 PM, at Temple Israel of Hollywood, we will be celebrating as part of our Kabbalat Shabbat service the Song of Songs with beautiful music set to its verse. We have invited members of our community who are celebrating milestone wedding anniversaries to join us, and we will offer them a blessing. If you are free and would like to join us, please do come.
Shabbat shalom and Moadim L’simchah!
10 Monday Apr 2017
The Haggadah is an exilic document. For Jews, as long as the world is filled with injustice, cruelty, violence, and war, our work is not done.
Judaism teaches that the messianic era will come only when justice, compassion, and peace characterize relationships between individuals, peoples, and nations, when the hearts of parents turn to their children and the hearts of children turn to their parents (Malachi 3:23-24).
Through intention, determination, righteous deeds, and moral activism, our Jewish mission and the essential message of the Passover Seder is, through remembrance that we were once slaves, to address every injustice, every act of cruelty and every insensitivity to bring nearer the day when the prophetic admonishments will no longer be necessary.
My poem “Maror-Bitterness” that follows, is one in a series of d’rashot (commentaries) published this week in the Los Angeles Jewish Journal by a number of Los Angeles rabbis who reflected on the symbols of the Seder (“Rabbis Dish on the Seder Plate – April 7-13, 2017. Pages 36-38 – jewishjournal.com/culture/religion/passover/217641/rabbis-dish-seder-plate/). I recommend them all.
Maror-Bitterness
The Almighty called to the children of Jacob:
“I have taken notice of you / And seen your suffering / And sent to you my prophet / To relieve you of your maror-bitterness.
I carried you on eagles’ wings / And shielded you from the pursuers’ arrows / So that whenever you taste the maror / You will remember / Who I am / And who you are / And why you are free.
As I took notice of your ancestors / I call upon you today / The descendants of slaves / Who know the heart of strangers / And their fear and desperation / And do for them as I have done for you / And liberate them / The oppressed and the tempest-tossed / The poor and the discarded / The old and the lonely / The abused and the addict / The victim of violence and injustice / And everyone who tastes daily the maror-bitterness / That you know so very well.
As you sit around your Seder tables / I call upon you to act / With open, pure and loving hearts / On My behalf / And be My witnesses / And bring healing and peace into the world.”
Poem by John L. Rosove, Temple Israel of Hollywood, Los Angeles
09 Sunday Apr 2017
As we contemplate the massive refugee crisis and the bigotry and fear that Trump has stoked in his efforts to exclude these tempest-tossed human beings from entering the United States, and as we remember that 36 times (double chai) the Hebrew Bible reminds us that we were strangers in Egypt and therefore (per Jewish tradition) that we must resist becoming cruel, this poem by the African American poet Audre Lorde (1934-1992) speaks powerfully to the heart and soul of every compassionate human being:
“Speak proudly to your children / Where ever you may find them / Tell them / You are the offspring of slaves.”
07 Friday Apr 2017
Posted in American Politics and Life, Ethics, Holidays, Social Justice
We are headed into Shabbat Hagadol (the “Great Shabbat”), the Sabbath that always precedes Pesach. It is called “Great” because of the second to last verse in the Haftarah portion Malachi (3:23) where it is written: “Lo, I will send the prophet Elijah to you before the coming of the ‘great’ and awe-inspiring day of God.”
On this eve before Pesach, I know I am not alone in my increasing distress and anxiety about President Trump’s and his administration’s utter lack of respect for our democratic institutions, our intelligence agencies, the judicial branch, the fifth estate, the social safety net, the nation’s health care, public education, science, and climate change.
And now there’s more about which to worry in the wake of Trump’s knee-jerk military response yesterday to Assad’s nerve gas attack without informing Congress in advance or seeking its counsel while continuing to refuse to welcome desperate Syrian refugees into America or to provide humanitarian aid to the beleaguered Syrian population.
I keep waiting to hear what Trump’s foreign policy is other than a transactional exercise in which “winning” is the end game. There doesn’t seem to be anything cogent, strategic or visionary about it. His utter disrespect for diplomacy and the nurturing of international alliances, his maddening disregard for facts, his self-centered manipulation of the news cycle to distract the country from the congressional investigation of his campaign’s collusion with Russia, and his massive and obsessive blaming everyone else for everything while never taking responsibility for anything, worries and sickens me about where this country is going, what is happening to our democracy, and what moral standing America will be able to claim when Trump’s term is over or he ends up impeached.
The irony on this Shabbat Hagadol is that Trump has no idea what ‘greatness’ really means. His dominant message has nothing to do with the exceptionalism of America. Rather, it’s about how much better he is than all his predecessors and political adversaries.
Many worry how Trump will handle his first significant crisis. I have comforted myself with the knowledge that he appointed some substantial, seasoned, reasoned, and knowledgeable people to lead the nation’s security and defense establishments. I have taken comfort in the strength of our democratic institutions as well as in many of our political leaders who are as deeply worried as are the rest of us. And I take comfort in the fact that most voters did not vote for Trump so I can’t be in the minority about my worries and concerns. I want to believe, as well, that millions of Trump voters have awoken to how badly they chose on election day, which must be true given his historically low approval ratings.
What makes this holiday of Pesach “great” is its moral and religious vision, the universalism of its message, and its acknowledgment of how inspired leadership and the actions of morally based communities can actually change history for the better.
Shabbat shalom and Hag Pesach Sameach